Yesterday Lancashire County Council gave unanimous support to a Liberal Democrat motion on Fracking. “We were delighted to get our motion on Fracking, seconded by Chris Coates from the Green Party, through Lancashire County Council with unanimous support, albeit with a common sense amendment from the Conservatives”, says CountyCouncillor Bill Winlow, Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group on LCC who proposed the motion

In his speech Cllr Winlow said “I would suggest that with the fracking moratorium having been lifted today for the exploratory phase, it is now time for LCC to put whatever pressure it can on central government to ensure that there is an industry specific regulator.  If the exploratory phase is successful, there will be a sudden and rapid blooming of the industry in a few years time and this could lead to the industrialisation of areas like Fylde, Wyre, West Lancashire, Hyndburn and parts of the RibbleValley.  We face industrialisation of these areas unless we keep control of the planning process”.

“For this reason we need to be assured that there will be: regular on-site inspections by the regulatory body; rigorously enforced regulations; considerable sanctions should any breach of regulations take place.  We therefore need an independent, industry specific regulator to ensure that inspections take place by qualified people who are independent of  fracking companies. “Central government needs to know that we in Lancashire are not entirely happy with the bureaucratic nightmare that current regulatory procedures will result in. Something better needs to be done for the sake of the people of Lancashire – we need to get it right both locally and nationally.”

The next big fight is to prevent central government from taking local control of the planning process for fracking away from LCC – the fight is not yet over!

The details of the amended motion are set out below (amends in blue):

Lancashire County Council recognises that:

The UK will face energy supply problems in the next few decades which are unlikely to be solved by current efforts to promote renewable sources of energy supply. Moreover, particularly in terms of security of gas supply, the UK is vulnerable to political actions in its sources of overseas supply.

It  follows that new sources of energy supply that involve controversial technologies and methods should not be rejected out of hand but be subject to careful scrutiny and regulation. One such process is Hydraulic Fracturing (Fracking) of shale type rock to release entrapped gas in commercial quantities.

Unfortunately there are no specific onshore exploration or extraction regulations for natural gas and the offshore regulations developed in the 1990s are not sufficient to address all the issues that arise from moving the process onshore especially in populated areas of Lancashire.

LCC welcomes the new controls on seismic activity announced today, but calls on the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to introduce Industry Specific regulation of hydraulic fracturing for the UK shale gas industry and to ensure that there are regular on-site inspections by the regulatory body with rigorously enforced regulations and considerable sanctions should any breach of regulations take place. Such industry specific regulation must ensure that local planning control is maintained.